In Tarrant County, a sheriff’s deputy was rescued by Fort Worth firefighters after she tried to assist a 70-year-old motorist whose car was lifted off a bridge by the flooding. Deputy Krystal Salazar, 26, was found clinging to a tree two hours after she attempted to rescue the stranded senior, who is currently considered missing. In North Texas, where more than 4 inches of rain fell overnight in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — pushing the annual rainfall total into the record books — three people died in separate accidents after being washed away in rapid floodwaters. Firefighters in Garland, a Dallas suburb, found the body of a 29-year-old man inside a submerged Hyundai Elantra after the car was swept from a bridge.

Power outages have been announced or warned of in areas of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. “There’s a pretty substantial shield of rain extending from parts of Texas across a lot of Oklahoma and into the mid-Mississippi Valley,” John Hart, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, told the Associated Press. Two people were rescued, but the third person’s body was later recovered near Mansfield, about 18 miles southeast of Fort Worth, sheriff’s spokesman Tim Jones said. With this holiday weekend storm, cities in the affected area – including Austin and Houston in Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Fort Smith, Arkansas; and St. Louis, Missouri – have reached or could reach yearly rainfall totals that put 2015 within their top ten wettest years on record, the Weather Channel reported. A search and rescue team was called to the scene​ about 8:30 a.m., but had to wait for the water​ level​ to ​decrease before checking on the car.

A sheriff’s spokeswoman said it wasn’t clear what role the wet roads had on a collision Friday afternoon on a U.S. highway in South Dallas in which two children were killed. Still, about 100 crashes had been reported as of Friday evening, said Trooper Cindy Barkley of the Texas Department of Public Safety office in Amarillo. State troopers are trained to drive slower in icy conditions, “and I probably drive slower than all of them,” Barkley said. “But we see people passing us all the time. It’s so frustrating.” In Oklahoma, road crews have been applying salt and sand in the Panhandle and northwestern part of the state since Thursday amid an ice storm warning that was in effect until noon Saturday. Rain in the southeast closed some highways because of flooding. “We definitely understand that people travel to see family and friends (for Thanksgiving), and have to travel back home.

The weather service issued a winter storm warning for sections of central and southern Kansas through early Saturday and said up to a quarter inch of sleet and ice could hit the state by Friday night.